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What is so Special about the folks of ABC DAYTIME!!?


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Agnes Nixon's soaps at their prime were also seen as the "gold standards"--not to take away from Bell whatsoever. Many people have said that AMC and Y&R had the best overall long runs partly due to Nixon and Bell, respectively, being so involved for so long. AMC really creatively didn't have a major slip till the very late 90s--almost thirty years, and I believe Y&R didn't till it had been about 30 years as well.

The ABC soaps also have a rep, deserved or not, for grabbing a more youthful demo which could be another reason. Basically--I have no idea but the soap pool is getting smaller and smaller, with shows increasingly more and more interested in hiring creative and crew talent from other soaps--so I think that plays a part.

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Yeah i didn't realize just how much till recently, but ABC is basically the starting ground for why soaps ever became so popular.

and like mentioned above, for the past decade or so they have indeed gathered more younger fans, then the CBS soaps probably have (besides myself)

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It is unfair, also I have to add when I started to sample some of the ABC soaps in like 2007-2008, particularly OLTL, I kept trying to figure out how it was possible that the show had been around since 1968 since the whole look of the show reminded me of like a Passions, and teen drama because I felt that the teens were getting more stories than the vets, and I know who Robin Strasser was because I first met her on Passions as Hecuba but I didn't know back then that Erika Slezak was supposedly more famous than the great divas of CBS daytime....Of course I learned later just how famous OLTL really was and how it was one of the best soaps ever for a long time because it tackled the first this and the first that....and also that it was one of the only better written shows (maybe besdies AMC) before it got cancelled.

But anyways I think that even though they may have given soaps their niche, I have to kind of think ABC is really way too overhyped sometimes. You have to give the Bell soaps credit, I mean they may not have brought the same level of quirky campiness the ABC soaps brought, but I don't think there has been any head writer like Bill or Bradley Bell that has dedicated being the show's head writer for many years....even Agnes took a few breaks from AMC when she wrote it.....

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Judging alone from audience response, I would say that shows like Y&R, even the current GH are trying to capitalize from the interest these shows (like AMC and OLTL) generated.

Look at it this way:

While there was an effort to try to keep GL on the air (perhaps ATWT as well), it just didn't/doesn't measure up to the hew and cry of the AMC/OLTL's fans. You have to give the fans of those shows credit, as rabid as some were, they were relentless in not giving up on these shows. They got the attention (perhaps even scared the dickens) out of the brass at ABC Daytime and, in numbers too big to ignore, they got the notice of a independent production company, Prospect Park, for, whatever you think about them, recognized the loyalty and support of these fans.

Talent of the creators/writers aside, the voracious and relentless support expressed by the fans of these shows, even after the shows were off the air, I think, convinced shows like Y&R that their ratings would rise with the addition of ABC soap stars (however flawed their logic) and it obviously convinced certain entities that the two shows were worth reviving on some level.

GL and ATWT-- While I'm sure people tried, I didn't see that level of sustained effort in such large numbers. Part of that reason my have to do with the fact that Procter & Gamble was determined to get out of the soap production business and many may have concluded that P&G was the only game in town. Some were floating around cable but many people dismissed that, deciding that the cost ratio would still make producing a soap an unattractive entity. I don't remember anyone floating the idea of going online. Oh well, they say, 'no idea before it's time...'

Also, the ratings for both cancelled ABC soaps were actually climbing before their final episodes aired (I think people like me, as a refugee from a cancelled CBS soap, may have contributed to this uptick), which may have convinced PP that these shows still had life in them yet. Can anyone say the same for GH/ATWT ratings-wise?

In terms of quality, even though fans can disagree whether AMC or OLTL veered too much toward camp or focused on certain characters too much, these two shows actually finished stronger than expected. I don't know if anyone can serious argue that GL or ATWT did anything other than limp to an anemic finale. There were nice moments for both shows but did either finale leave a searing speech in fan's memories like the one that Erica Slezak delivered on OLTL? Were people still debating months later of either GL's or ATWT's finales the way that they argued over the cliffhanger on AMC?

I think the circumstances of how weak/strong each soap finished their broadcast run, mixed with how sustained and strong an effort from the fans, made a difference in whether the shows attracted the attention of a production company or anyone who had some sort of power to bring the show back to the fans in some form or revive the ratings of a current struggling soap-- ultimately proved to be key factors.

Time will tell whether Prospect Park pulls this all off but obviously they were somehow convinced that these shows were worth the effort.

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This question seems to be more about the heyday for ABC than the end. I'd say that the main reason they became so envied and popular was their ability to tap into the cultural zeitgest and the youth demo. Nothing had ever been talked about the way GH and to a lesser degree AMC were in the early 80s. These weren't dirty little secrets. They were mainstream.

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It's all relative though. I always thought the Bell soaps were overated when I first became a soap fan :P--now I think I have a better perspective on all of them.

As Agnes, and I think Bill, have both said they have quite different styles--but great respect for each other's work. It always interests me how they each trained under Irna, and they sorta took different aspects of her style and then ran with them. Imean to say that Bell's Y&R never had any camp would be silly, but it certainly felt different. Agnes' shows tended to have more outfight caricatures (Schemering compared her to Dickens in this--saying how AMC (this was back in the early 80s) mixed caricatured comic relief characters who would be played broadly, with her classic young love stories, and social issues (which is a pretty apt description of most Dickens' works too). I would also say her shows tended--and by this I mean at their most typical--to be a bit more down to earth whereas Bell played up the glamour and, for lack of a better word, soapiness (ie the dark psychology behind many of his DAYS and Y&R characters, taking things like the long pause and zoom in on a character before a commercial to its extreme, etc). That's not to knock either approach.

To be fair to Agnes, apparently she was an extremely active consultant even when not head writing, up through at least her last co-HW stint in 99-2000. That's not too much of a difference between when Bill was most involved at Y&R.

As for being overated--it's always interesting reading the critiques the soap press gave Nixon's soaps through the 70s. Many of them didn't like her style, and liked themore traditional soap (Schemering, who was a fan, mentions that some soap fans felt the tone was too much of a mismatch--going from a broadly comic scene and then immediately to a darker issue, etc). ABC was still very much trying to get any sort of audience for their soaps--being very much the newbie compared to NBC and especially CBS and so with One Life and AMC were willing to let Nixon take some risks other networks wouldn't (and in reaction, CBS seemed to be ok with doing the same for Bell and Y&R). While there have always been soap fans of all ages, people did not pay attention to the youth audience until OLTL and AMC became such large college campus phenomenons really very early in their runs (there was a NYT article about it in 1972 I believe and my the mis 70s they were doing tours of campuses).

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For real soap boy aka undercover? lol bet

Tell me how a question is hating? Some of you are tripping. Hate that. One person started with the anmiated remarks and the rest of the clan follows suite how lame. Be your own person.

Thank you to the rest of you who chose to partake in adult convo instead of pasting whack ass gif's and the on the down low cheerleaders that has to prop up some one else.

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